Sable
Thomas Parker shivered convulsively, drawing his legs up close to his chest and clinging to Boatswain’s warm white fur. The dog panted happily; the frigid waters of the North Atlantic meant nothing to him, protected as he was by a thick doublecoat of cream white fur that was splotched here and there with large black spots like someone had spilled pitch on him. Ahead, in the bow, Richard Dunlap rowed, wiry knots of muscle pushing the oars indomitably through the waters to the fogshrouded island ahead.
Their ship, the brigantine Nancy, hauling muskets and powder to Salem, went down three hours before in a flaming tangle of sailcloth and rigging. There had been signs, Thomas knew- the dawn broke crimson, arterial clouds on the horizon that rapidly painted the sky black as tar, and Nancy was haloed in witchfire in the moments before the storm lashed down. Then the wind exploded into the sails and the sodden clouds broke asunder as though the Firmament itself had shattered. The mainmast was whipped twice by jagged tongues of lightning and the flames devoured everything in their path like a thousand gleeful devils.
Alone on the deck, Thomas had found the ship’s dog already huddled in the lifeboat, a sopping wet mop trying to hide under the bench. He struggled to release the boat from its davit. Only fourteen but wiry from a half decade of service, he’d gotten the boat halfway down, one end tipping high into the air as though sinking in tandem with its mothership. Boatswain whined as the lifeboat tipped, scrabbling to right himself on the shifting bench. Then Richard Dunlap, the cook, came charging out of the hold, yellow flames nipping at his crozzled heels. His feet went out from under him on a tarslick that coated the deck from some ruptured cask and he went sprawling. He scrambled to his feet an instant later as the whole ship seemed to begin groaning, a leviathan in its death throes. Dunlap shoved Thomas aside with a fierce growl, then quickly lowered the lifeboat properly. He leaped over the gunwale, not waiting for Thomas, who followed a second behind as his erstwhile savior seemed poised to leave him behind.
Still tethered to the ship by its umbilical pulleys, Dunlap drew his beltknife and sawed the rope. He cut through the aft line, and that end of the boat plopped into the churning waters with a mighty splash; then he raced to the bow to cut that line as well. He succeeded, but at the moment of his triumph the rope snapped and whipped him across the face. Blood leaked from lacerated cheeks. His hands shot up to the stinging wound, the knife fumbling from his frantically groping hands and plummeting into the broiling sea. No time to mourn its loss; Dunlap simply grabbed the oars and began rowing as quickly as possible away from the ship. Its prow slid silently below the surface, drawing the lifeboat back a few yards in the vortex which Dunlap fought and fought, alternating between cussing and praying as he frantically rowed. Half a minute later a titanic explosion turned the placid surface into a spray of seafoam, splinters and woodchips in the ejecta threatening to sink the lifeboat then and there by a thousand tiny punches.
After clearing the wreck, they had rowed aimlessly for half an hour before Dunlap began to tire. Then he simply allowed the strong current to drag the lifeboat along, as though they were meandering down some oceanic river. The island came into view after two and a half hours, when the cold witch of the Atlantic seemed poised to pluck the soul from each man and leave behind only two frozen corpses and a lonely dog in the forlorn boat. Thomas saw it first, the dunes rising but indistinctly through the fog, dreamlike, and through blue, sputtering lips he cried out rapturously “Land ho!”
It wasn’t much of an island. Rumpled dunes reared sixty feet high before them, capped with tender meadows of marram that danced in the November winds. Naught a tree in sight, nor did any sign of settlement greet their eyes. Simply sand and grass, stretching as far as they could see in either direction. Reefs of cloud scudded overhead, detritus of the storm that had claimed Nancy and casting the island in gunmetal gloom.
The lifeboat beached twenty feet offshore, and Dunlap hopped out to drag the boat that last distance to safety, the keel leaving a long rake in the sand like the clawmarks of some antediluvian behemoth hoisting itself forth from the primordial ooze. The cook nearly collapsed from exhaustion when he’d finally gotten the boat past the wrack line, and when Thomas hopped out of the boat himself he’d almost wanted to kiss the sand, and only the weariness of his body kept him from doing so; too exhausted to even pucker his frozen lips, he simply lay sprawled on the sand. All he wanted to do was fall asleep right there in the wrack, to succumb wholly to the numbness which had taken hold of his extremities and crept inexorably up his veins and toward his heart. He was roused by rough, knobbly fingers on his shoulders.
“Get up, boy. We’ll be dead in an hour if’n we don’t get a fire started right quick.”
The fire crackled and hissed and set a new constellation of embers up against the Milky Way which glowed sacred and bright overhead, like an inconceivably vast pillar of purest white swathed in a garland of coaldust. The burning driftwood smelled of salt. Perhaps brown as oak or chestnut once but it had been bleached bone-pale and tumbled smooth as ivory by the long years at sea; Thomas had spent most of the afternoon working the feeling back into his fingers and toes by trekking along the beach to gather it, working in a rough grid pattern beginning at the lifeboat, his heels digging Celtic knots in the sand as he worked. A stack of wooden bones piled high close behind them, safe from the drenching waves whose echoes roared through the misty night.
Thomas was reclining on the cool sand now, using Boatswain’s shaggy body as a pillow while the dog enjoyed the warmth of the flames. Dunlap sat opposite them, staring hollow-eyed into the pyre. The cook was a gangly beanpole man, with elbows and knees protruding like burls. His hair was a slovenly mess of long, drab brown, resembling a mat of sopping eelgrass. Eyes stared long into the flame, the green of them catching the dancing flame and holding it like a microcosmic wildfire. He reminded Thomas of Long Lankin, who lived in the moss.
“I’ll search the island tomorrow,” Dunlap muttered, still staring into the driftwood fire. His voice sounded like gravel crunching under a boot. “Find us some food.”
He spit into the fire and the fire spat back, a sizzling eruption of sparks singeing his eyebrows. Thomas stifled a laugh at his comrade’s dazed expression. He traced his fingers hypnotically through Boatswain’s fur, from the back of his head down to his midsection, and back again. The dog was fast asleep and didn’t flinch at the sound of the fire crackling.
“It’d be better if we both went,” Thomas said after a minute, restarting the conversation. “Cover more ground that way.”
Dunlap considered that. “Yeah. Reckon so. One of us goes east, one of us goes west… see what we find.”
“Maybe garefowl,” Thomas said longingly, salivating at the thought of a plump auk roasting over the driftwood flame. There were billions of them in Newfoundland and the Orkneys, painting the craggy islets white with their droppings. A single egg to each pair, laid on a barren cliffside and balanced only by mother’s love. Yellowish white, the eggs; signed in a meandering inkscrawl legible only to birds. The yolks were enormous. Impossible not to get one’s whole face and hands covered in grease eating a garefowl, so fatty and oily were they.
“Maybe. I heard there was wild hens runnin’ around the colonies,” Dunlap said, “Big heath birds, with ears like an owl and fatter’n a penguin even.” He stopped and patted his stomach hungrily. “Good eatin’.”
Thomas smiled and found his own stomach growling at the thought, himself and Boatswain and Dunlap chasing down some mottled prairie chicken the size of a toddler and plucking it clean, its tender flesh dripping fat into the fire.
“Seems a decent-sized island,” Dunlap continued. “Probably seals around somewhere. Gotta be some vegetables here too, or berries. Once we find some trees we’ll have good firewood too, not this rank salt-smelling stuff. Burns my eyes.” He knew better now than to spit in the fire again.
“Maybe there are people here,” Thomas added hopefully, “There could be a village somewhere.”
“Maybe,” Dunlap replied, with a noncommital shrug. “Maybe.”
They’d no blankets in the lifeboat, so the two men simply edged as close as possible to the fire, like moths flocking round a gaslamp. Thomas was further toasted by Boatswain’s warm fur, and they slept as peacefully as castaways could, awakening only to stoke the fire when the lifebringing flame drew dangerously low.
Dawn brought a fog through which the waves resonated like the echoes of a dream. Thomas bolted upright, alarmed, holding his hands in front of his face and wondering if he were dead, trapped in Sheol or Purgatory. But the sand beneath him was the same sand as on Earth, and the mass of fur behind him was the same old Boatswain, yawning and stretching luxuriantly in the misty dawn. The fire had burned down to cinders and the the waterlogged air was frigid. He was desperately thirsty; his throat dry as dust and cobwebbed with phlehm which he hacked up onto the sand and almost wished back into his mouth for want of what little moisture it held.
Dunlap was a basalt column silhouetted starkly against the brume, gazing out towards the invisible sea. Not even the dunes were visible behind them through the fog. He turned back towards Thomas and the cabinboy could feel Dunlap’s eyes lingering on him, no matter that his face was an indistinct blur.
“We’ll wait for it to clear up, then we’ll go explorin’.” Dunlap said hoarsely, and Thomas could feel the oppressive gaze suddenly lift, like the fog that dissipated back into the ether an hour and a half later.
They’d no breakfast- no breakfast to be had, for the world was indifferent to the thirst in their throats and the hunger in their bellies, and it was more this nagging want than the improved weather which finally got them up and moving. Unable to rekindle the fire since the mist had dampened their driftwood, Dunlap had simply been staring into the smoking tepee of charcoals left behind, standing like an minikin cromlech. He rose morosely to his feet and groaned at the apex of a stretch, muscles still weary from yesterdays’s rowing.
He looked long and hard down either end of the island. “Seems we landed about in the middle of the place. I’ll walk the west side til I can’t walk no farther, and you do the same for the east.”
Thomas nodded vigorously despite his thirst, excited at the prospect of exploring the strange new land.
“What we’re lookin’ for is water foremost, then food and any kind ‘a shelter,” Dunlap continued. “And anything else that might be of use- firewood, anything that might’ve washed up from the ship.”
“And villages,” Thomas finished. “If there are any.”
Dunlap nodded. He looked up and considered the sun for a moment. “Not quite noon yet. We’ll walk til either we find the ends of the island, or there’s only one hand of daylight left- whichever comes first. Last thing either of us needs is to get lost and go traipsing ‘round here after dark. Understand?”
Thomas nodded, springing to his feet. Boatswain did a lap around the boy, his ostrich plume tail swishing eagerly as he sensed they were finally leaving the dreary beach. All seemed well in the world to the landseer; they weren’t hopeless castaways, they were simply in a new place, an exciting new place to be explored and marked and, if necessary, defended.
“Alright,” Dunlap said, rising to his feet. “Come, dog.”
“What?” Thomas blurted, almost unconsciously taking a step closer to Boatswain. The dog looked up at Thomas inquisitively, big amber eyes imploring him to explain the situation in a way a dog could understand.
“I’m taking the dog,” Dunlap said. “He’ll be good for sniffin’ out food.”
He’ll also be good for protection if anything goes wrong, which is why I want him, Thomas thought, but he swallowed his fear before replying. “But he’s… he’s like my dog, though.”
“He’s the ship’s dog,” Dunlap retorted callously. “Whole crew’s, not jes’ yours.”
“But you never did anything with him!” Thomas protested, waving his hands jerkily as if to emphasize the statement. He didn’t make mention of the time he’d seen Dunlap kick Boatswain while the dog was dozing peacefully in the shade of the mizzen. No apparent motive, Dunlap was simply walking by and Boatswain was there in kicking range. Another good reason not to let Dunlap have him.
“That don’t make no nevermind!” Dunlap roared, his fists balling. He leaned menacingly forward but Thomas stood his ground, puffing his chest, ready to fight for the dog.
It never came to blows, for at that moment Boatswain lunged out from behind Thomas, nearly bowling him to the ground as his bristling brush thwacked the backs of the boy’s knes. Snarling viciously at Dunlap, his jowls drawn back in a vicious snarl that revealed his gleaming armoury. Soft black brow furrowed into a mask of hatred. The normally soft, loving eyes boring into Dunlap, full of enmity and hate. Hackles raised he seemed more bear than dog, savage and wild as his distant canine forebears on the mammoth steppe.
The message was clear enough. Dunlap staggered back cussing, pointing a wicked, scolding finger at the dog before wisely withdrawing his hand and darting his beady, mossy eyes around looking for a weapon. No convenient sword or flintlock materialized to allow him to try conclusions with the mighty landseer, and Dunlap’s thumping heart slowed to a canter when he realized the dog wasn’t coming after him and had instead taken up a guarding position in front of Thomas. Sitting now, seemingly placid but with his ears pointed alertly forward, daring Dunlap to try.
“Fine!” Dunlap sputtered. “Fine, take the stupid bloody dog! Jes’ a bloody feckin’ mongrel is all ‘e is anyway! I’ll goes by myself!”
He stormed off, Thomas staying to watch until the cook faded to an enraged little speck on the horizon. At one point he saw Dunlap stoop to pick up a long club of driftwood, and then Thomas turned to Boatswain. The dog looked up at him again- the wolfish eyes were gone, and restored was all the warm lovingness of man’s best friend. Thomas squatted down to level the dog’s gaze, and he buried his hands in the warm, cream white fur of his neck.
“I appreciate what you did,” Thomas said firmly, “But Dunlap is our friend too; you can’t ever do that again, understand?”
He stared into Boatswain’s eyes until the dog submissively averted his gaze, and when Thomas’s grip on the dog’s neck softened Boatswain returned the gesture with a slimy, sandpapery tongue across the cheek.
“Oh you little,” Thomas laughed, pushing the big dog off him. “Come on, let’s get started.”
Thomas didn’t want to just beachcomb. The island was an island- any wealth it had would be found beyond the dunes. So that’s where he headed, across the waste of sugarsand toward the nearest barchan curl. The dunes rose in rectilinear columns, some of them caked hard as limestone by the blasting wind that left only the strongest foundations behind, like the fossilized ruins in Egypt or Mesopotamia. Some rose sheer as cliffs and were capped with a buzz-cut of marram, but there was a gently sloping hummock to the left that Thomas veered toward. Pure sand, no marram here sticking thin roots into the tenuous ground.
Sand scuffed beneath his feet as he ascended the dune, leaving silky prints in the golden grains that the winds swept up tidily behind him. Boatswain’s stiff-legged gait kicked up little clouds of the stuff that whirled away on the breeze like midday will-o-the-wisps. As he climbed, visions swirled in his head of plump garefowl nesting in vast, raucous colonies, or dappled seal pups begging for the club. A village, with heath hens skewered over the fire. November now, the time for harvest feasts before the long winter to come. Maybe he’d even discover a colony of mermaids. Ridiculous, he knew, but his adolescent mind zeroed in on that remote possibility, and he was eminently fascinated by the thought of buxom sea nymphs basking on some sunwarmed skerry just offshore, ample breasts poorly concealed by dripping wet hair the shade of autumn rowan. Like Nell the Irish maid, back on Baker Street, who always seemed to be spilling out of her stay… her with a shining, svelte fish tail and scallops cupping her tits, beckoning to him coyly under her lashes…
The wonderful fantasy carried him to the crest of that first dune, helping him to ignore the sweat he’d built up in spite of the cold and the ache in his belly and the thirst that scorched his throat. Once he’d successfully trudged up, he got a mountaineer’s view of what the rest of the journey would entail. A vast, arid heathland unfolded before him, stretching east as far as he could see. Almost totally sand, sand stretching in a rumpled blanket of barchans and blowouts riven by aeolian gullies. Everywhere the dunes were draped lovingly in marram, their lees quilted by rippling fields of bluegrass and sandwort and red fescue, puncuated here and there by stunted bayberry and juniper shrubs. Not a single tree in sight beneath all the whipped cirrus sky. The vales were totally devoid of animal life, too, and he knew a once that there were no villages on the island. No cowpaths cut through the marram, nor were there any of the telltale cart-ruts or litter that even the most distant English heaths had giving lie to the fact that they had been densely inhabited for centuries. Save for a flock of gulls that wheeled on the thermals high above, the island seemed a throwback to the Third Day of Creation.
The island’s entire breadth was visible from the peak of the dune, being not more than half a mile at its widest, bracketed by whitecaps of the brooding Atlantic. But it semed to stretch off to an infinite east, the dunes just as tall on the horizon as they were where Thomas and Boatswain now stood. The sun beat down through the cirrus deck, and the heath grasses sighed as the wind toyed through their stalks. The only sounds the near whisper of the breeze and the distant lamentations of the sea. Thomas simply stood for a long moment, taking it in, and he thought that for an eternal yesterday the whole world must have been just like this. He stood, and stood, and finally Boatswain nudged against his hand and brought him back to reality.
“Well old boy,” Thomas sighed, shaking off the reverie, “Let’s go.”
The journey across the heath only confirmed what he already knew- there were no trees, and no villages, and no animals of any kind. Sand crunched beneath his toes as he stepped onto the fescue floor. The bottom of the vale was wet, pocked with brackish pools around which clustered crowberries and, in the water itself, the bright red dots of…
“Cranberries!” Thomas cried, rushing forward, the heeltrod fescue rebounding silently behind him.
The water they stood in wasn’t exactly fresh, but neither was it salty and Thomas drank it greedily, cupping dirt, soot-stained hands into the pristine pool to lap up the lifebringing fluid. Fingers brushed the soft, round leaves of the basin’s floor as he scooped up the clear water. Rainwater, surely, otherwise the sandwort and cranberries would have been long drowned. Once he had slaked his thirst he began scooping handfuls of the tart red berries, shoveling them into his mouth as though they were the last sustenance in the world- and for all he knew, they were.
He stopped only when there were no more berries to be had from that pool, and then guiltily he looked over at Boatswain. The big dog had sat back on his haunches to watch the boy’s gluttony, observing the proceeding with a dispassionate innocence, the kind of primal naivete the preachers said Man had lost on that fateful morning in Eden.
“Let’s find you some, boy,” Thomas said, rising to his feet and skulking guiltily around the heath. Boatswain for his part was content to simply lap at the rainwater pool, and he stayed there to drink his fill while Thomas searched for more berries.
There was another cranberry pool a few yards away, and these he picked carefully. He held a wet handful of the plump scarlet beads out to Boatswain, who sniffed them suspiciously with his moist bear snout, shaking his head and sneezing in rejection.
“Oh don’t be like that now,” Thomas scolded gently. He picked up one of the juicy berries out of his palm and held it up so Boatswain could see. “It’s good, see?” he said, tossing the berry onto his tongue which was stained a deep red from the tart juices.
Boatswain cautiously approached again, enormous paws snapping stalks of fescue beneath them, and he sniffed the berries again. Again Thomas plucked one from his palm, and this time held it out singly for Boatswain’s inspection. The dog took it gingerly on his tongue, and backed away to chew. His eyes went wide and he spit it onto the ground a moment later, retching at the tangy afterflavor. He looked over at Thomas accusingly, then trotted to the pool and lapped away the taste.
“Well, they’re not for everybody I suppose,” Thomas said, more to himself. He ran his fingers through the warm white fur of Boatswain’s back, down to the black splotch over his hips before the plumed tail that swished placidly side to side. “We’ll find you something, old boy.”
Once Boatswain had slaked his thirst, Thomas drank again, his belly full of water and berries, and they kept on down the island. The next dune rose a sheer fifty feet above the heath floor, and Thomas and Boatswain each triggered an avalanche in miniature behind them as the brittle sand crumbled beneath sliding heels and paws.
The driftwood fire snapped and hissed at Thomas as he sat before it. The mourning sea roared its eternal paean into the night, and the axle of the galaxy once more slowly dragged itself across the starsalted abyss. Dunlap was stoking the briny flame, muttering to himself.
“Ain’t nothin’ but a bloody spit,” he cussed, slumping down before the fire, “Bloody sandbar shaped bout like a bull’s horns or one of ‘em cressie’ moons. No wood, no food, nothin’. Nothin’ ‘cept the ponds. Freshwater. We need that.”
Thomas nodded. It was as he was expecting. His own excursion, aside from the cranberries- which he temporarily held back from Dunlap, as at least one bit of good news- had found no trace of food. There were no hens or garefowl on this island. Birds once, yes- he’d found weathered old nests scattered among the sandwort. But it was mid-November, and wherever the birds went to in winter, it didn’t do Thomas or Dunlap one ounce of good.
“What about seals?” Thomas asked.
“Seals aplenty, yes. But no pups, so good luck clubbin’ an adult with these twigs,” he spat, tossing a slender reed of driftwood contemptuously into the fire. “They were big an’ mean fellers, too. Had tusks longer’n my arm and chased me halfway up the dunes.”
“Walruses! Thomas exclaimed.
“What?”
“The tuskers, they weren’t seals- they were walruses!”
The scene came flashing back from the happy recesses of Thomas’s memory- a few years ago, a walrus had swam up the Thames. A Pantagruelian hulk of blubber, looking like a great smoked ham with elephant tusks and a mustache. Such an improbable beast. Stranded thousands of miles from home in a totally alien landscape of cobblestone and carriages. He’d been with the crowd of urchins who came to gawk at it when it came ashore near Bankside. Some naturalist had come out from the museum and shot it. It was stuffed now, probably hidden away in a stale-aired attic, gazing out through marble eyes over a collection of inanimate gemstones and skewered butterflies.
“Don’t know nothin’ about em,” Dunlap said, “‘Cept they were mean as hell an’ stout as boulders.”
They sat in silence for a moment while Dunlap brooded over the walruses.
“Well, I didn’t find any freshwater on my side of the island,” Thomas said, starting his own report, “Except for a few small rainwater pools. So I reckon we should move ourselves by one of the pools you found.”
Dunlap considered that, and nodded.
“There’s a heath stretching the entire middle of the island, in the saddle between the dunes. That valley should protect us from the worst of the wind, too. ‘Specially if we find a good spot where two dunes join. Saw a few like that on my walk.”
“Good lad,” Dunlap said, something approaching respect creeping into his low tone.
Thomas was pleased enough, but said nothing. No sense trying to milk it for more than it was worth; he knew he was lucky Dunlap had said anything nice at all. “Lot of grass here. It’d be paradise for ponies.”
Dunlap sputtered out a sigh and lowered his head into his knees. When he came up, he chuckled a trifle hysterically; a sighing laugh of despair. “Ponies, eh?”
“Yeah,” Thomas grinned, his own humor ungallowed. “Big ‘ole palfreys or Clydesdales, can you see ‘em.”
Dunlap sat back and said nothing for a moment. Finally he looked up at the stars longingly and huffed. “Wish we did have horses here; I’d eat horse right about now.”
“No horses, but I found cranberries,” Thomas blurted, unable to contain himself any longer.
“Cranberries, eh?” Dunlap said, snapping to attention.
“Mmhmm,” Thomas nodded. “They were in the rainpools. There’s a whole bog of them about a mile from here.”
Dunlap nodded, his belly grumbling at the thought. “Well they won’t sustain us long, but cranberries is fine for now I s’pose.”
He stared into the flame again, and for the first time since the wreck Thomas saw the man smile.
“Yes,” he mumbled, more to himself, “Tomorrow we’ll move inland, by one of the pools. Then we’ll walk to the bog an’ pick cranberries, have ourselves a decent breakfast. They be celebratin’ Thanksgivin’ in Plymouth about now. If’n the injuns hain’t killed them all yet. Tomorrow we’ll have ourselves our own little Thanksgivin’.”
“What’s Thanksgivin’?” Thomas asked.
Dunlap leaned back, eyes blankly reflecting the starlight as he was lost in the halls of memory, gathering his thoughts. “Well, back about thrity years ago, when the colonies was jes’ gettin’ settled, the Pilgrims at Plymouth din’t know how to farm proper in New World soils. So some friendly injuns taught ‘em how- plantin’ fishheads next to the maize to enrich it an’ such. They were Wampanoags, the Injuns that is- one by the name a’ Squanto, an’ some others. An’ after survivin’ their first harvest thanks to the advice of the injuns, the Pilgrims invited them into town for a big feast- hens an’ turkeys an’ venison, cranberries, squash, maize- all thing sthe injuns taught ‘em how to grow, or hunt.”
He smiled grimly into the fire.
“They be killin’ each other now, boy. Right as we speak. Pilgrims and Wampanoags; burnin’ each other’s towns an’ villages down to the posts. Takin’ scalps as trophies. Metacom, is the Wampanoag’s chieftain- calls ‘iself King Philip.”
“Why?” Thomas asked, swallowing hard. Transfixed by the horrific images that now crossed his imagination, of isolated villages being raided and put to the torch by tomahawk-wielding savages with feathers for hair and skin the color of a lakebed, of men and women screaming and pleading for their lives before they were scalped.
“Why what? Why they fighting, or why King Philip?”
“Both, I s’pose…”
“Well, Metacom took the name Philip ‘cuz he was friends with the Pilgrims, or thought he was anyway. As for why they’re fightin’… don’t know. Don’t matter much, does it? White man, Red man, can’t exist on the same soil can they? Whoever’s stronger kicks the other out, or stomps on his head. That’s history for ya.”
He smiled eerily, seeming to relish the same thought of bloodshed that made Thomas blanch and stare hollow-eyed into the fire.
“Almost makes yer’ glad to be here instead of in Salem, don’t it boy? Could be pressed into a militia, taken out to the frontier an’ seein prim lil’ Pilgrim maidens with the top of their heads missin’, jes the skull left, red as a beet.”
“Stop it,” Thomas said. Eyes wide in fear now, his mind’s eye drafting up scenes of horror- suddenly Nell the maid wasn’t a maid or a sea nymph anymore, she was laying dead in a cabin burnt to a crisp, the timbers jagged charcoal fangs, but her body was perfectly unburned and indeed untouched save for the vermillion smoothness of her exposed skull…
“Jes’ sayin, you might well be glad to be stuck here wit’ me.” Dunlap said, the fire twinkling cruelly in his eyes as he imagined what Thomas must have been imagining. His smile lingered, and he kept staring at Thomas, far too long it seemed. Licked his lips and drank in the sight of the scared boy. Did he now wonder if there were injuns back of the dunes, ready with knives and tomahawks? God that boy looked good. Long, wind-tousled hair reaching down to his shoulders, still possessing that boyish grace; he reminded Dunlap of little James, a bastard he’d met in a Liverpool tavern… not as soft-skinned, after years at sea, but that couldn’t be helped. All James had needed was a little hooch and he was willing as any other whore; no matter that the boy’d hanged himself after. No regrets, but with the law catching up to him it was either the gallows or a new life on the Nancy…
Thomas shifted uneasily in the sand, unsure of what was stirring behind Dunlap’s leering gaze but instinctively disliking it. His left hand felt unconsciously for Boatswain. The dog wasn’t there. His eyes darted around the beach but the firelight provided only a thin halo of light and Boatswain, wherever he was, was totally lost in the inky dark. Suddenly Thomas wanted very badly to have the mighty landseer at his side, for the world now seemed condensed down to simply he and Dunlap.
“Come here, boy.” Dunlap said huskily. He leaned back on the sand, comfortable and confident.
“Why?” Thomas asked.
“‘Ave a little treat for ya,” he said mysteriously, but his trousers were loose and there was nothing secret about what “treat” he had in mind.
“Buggerer!” Thomas yelled, bolting upright, fists balled at his sides. “Filthy buggerer!”
“Mind your mouth, boy.” Dunlap bellowed, scrambling to his own feet. “I hain’t joined the God-damned East India to be called that no more!”
Thomas took a step backward as Dunlap advanced. The cook was lanky, but his rough hands seemed vast and irresistible as he reached out to grab Thomas’s shirt.
And then Boatswain stepped over the dunes. Announcing his presence with a low, serious rumble from the depths of his throat. It carried all the way across the beach, drowning the moan of the waves and chilling the blood of both men. Dunlap stood stock still and stare at the big dog who had crested the dune and stood illumined by a pale ivory tusk of moon and the axle of the galaxy, his pinto coat black and devilish as a gytrash. His starlit eyes were splintered with rubies, and the cold moonlight twinkled on fangs which held a limp gull in the vise grip of his jaws. Broken jag of a wing dangling from between the bone-crushing carnassials. He cantered down the dune, heavy and big-boned, his gait deceptively casual but serious, head held high to remind both of the men that he possessed immense muscle and bite.
Boatswain trotted towards them, looking very ursine, or perhaps leonine, as he stalked down that ghostly beach, and then the warm glow of the fire broke the devilhound illusion and turned him back into a landseer. He circled Thomas once. Closely. Protectively. Eyeing Dunlap, who had backed away three wide, slow paces during the dog’s approach. Then he dropped the gull at Thomas’s feet and sat down on his haunches, staring from his deepset eyes right at Dunlap. Challenging him. Daring him to make a move.
Thomas was speechless. He felt as though he were made of feathers. His heart thumped airily, and he exhaled shakily, the relief of Boatswain’s arrival flushing him and turning his fight-tensed muscles to jelly. His hands shook as he squatted down to scratch and knead Boatswain’s black ears. He looked briefly over at Dunlap, who had skulked back over toward the lifeboat but eyed the gull greedily. Then he turned back and locked eyes with Boatswain. Vast, innocent eyes, but with a determination he had never seen before.
“Good boy,” he shuddered, “Good boy.”
Two months later Thomas sat atop the dune staring out at the white whales as they drifted by like icebergs, occasionally loosing an icy geyser from their spouts. Their sounds carried even across a mile of sea on which the moonlight shivered and danced ethereally. High-pitched trills and flutings. Mournful, a formless hymn to the mind of the God that created them, all the more beautiful illuminated by the vast white smear of the galaxy.
Thomas was a gaunt trellis of a boy, a ragdoll lying slack against Boatswain’s side watching the whales and the silver moonlight playing the rippling sea like beads of mercury. He sighed heavily, Boatswain’s white fur a comfortable pillow despite the fact that the dog was also emaciated, his once-luxuriant coat a loose blanket draped over big bones. Thomas didn’t look any better- ribs laddered up his sides, belly almost completely vanished. Like some poor wretch escaped from a dungeon.
The cranberries had been harvested to the last- they’d begun to tire of them after two weeks anyway, but being the only sustenance on the island they’d forced themselves to continue eating them until they cursed the red droplets. Then their shrinking stomachs kept them going despite their disgust. By the end of the first month, Dunlap had finally gained the hunger-valor to try conclusions with a walrus. He’d staggered down the beach armed with one of the lifeboat oars which he’d sat sharpening with a piece of seaflint like a latterday cromagnon. His warrior image that of a a traipsing skeleton vanishing into the fog like an antediluvian troglodyte marching obligingly toward its own extinction. Ghostly pale against the brume. His sleeves hung from pencil-thin arms like a scarecrow’s rags. Dunlap trekked back through his own footprints an hour later, shoulders sunk as the Nancy. Trudging pathetically up to the fire, he’d slumped down and said the walruses were gone. Left for their rich clambeds to the north as winter came down fast and cruel upon them.
When the first snow hissed down that night, the three of them had to shelter together under the lifeboat. None of them equipped to stick it out except Boatswain, but Thomas wouldn’t part from his company, not after that second night round the fire. The upturned boat a temporary haven, warmed only by their breath and the heat of their bodies. Dunlap hugged his knees miserably at the stern, while thomas and Boatswain snuggled together at the bow. A skeleton hedge of driftwood between them, all they could hastily spare from the sleet. The floor of marram and sandwort a parody of bedding but at least it felt soft, soft as down to their weary bodies. Boatswain had been healthier then, eating what the two men couldn’t tolerte- washed up fishheads, gull carcasses riven by maggots, inscrutable flotsam from the great deep.
One of Boatswain’s finds nearly killed Dunlap- and might kill him yet, Thomas reflected grimly. Another what spout caught his eye as he recalled it, and he kneaded his fingers through the loose skin on Boatswain’s neck. The shark had washed up on the opposite side of the beach they’d landed on, after the first snow. A swarm of gulls alerted them, a cacophonous tornado of glacking seabirds gyring around the carcass. They’d made a beggar’s moccasins out of their trousers to brave the snow, and reached the shark forty minutes later unable to feel their toes or their soles anymore. Massive, a twenty-three foot cigar lying on its side half out of the surf. Sightless even before death, its cold white eyes congealed by cataracts. Boatswain had ripped open its white belly, spilling half-rotten guts from the bloated cave behind the gills. It smelled hideous, but Dunlap stared at it hollow-eyed and decided to risk tearing a chunk of white flesh from the fish’s hide. He’d cooked it til it was burned throguh, a rich brown-black fillet that didn’t taste as bad as it smelled, though how much of that was due to the submission of the tongue to the agony of starvation was anyone’s guess. He’d thrown it all up an hour later. Spent the night behind a dune, shitting his guts out onto the marram, continuing to vomit even after his stomach was long emptied of all its bile. Cursing and pleading with God to make it stop.
The sound of footsteps broke Thomas from the memory. Dunlap’s, his ragged moccasins sinking into the snowcovered dune with a biscuity crunch. He turned to meet the cook’s gaze- a shell of a man, hollow eyes sunken in his orbits, staring first at the boy, then shifting to the dog. He held the sharpened oar tautly his right hand.
“Thomas,” Dunlap wheezed, the word leaving him in a ragged half-cough that he had to fight down, “We’re starving.”
“I know that,” Thomas replied dryly, “What’s your point?”
“We’ve used all the berries, an’ there’s only-” He coughed long and hard, sputting up some blackish-red substance that might once have been blood onto the pure snow, “There’s only one scrap of food left on this godfersakin’ island. And you’ve been usin’ it as a pillow.”
He jabbed an accusing finger at Boatswain, not sure how else to get his point across. Thomas looked back suddenly at Boatswain, meeting the dog’s eyes. Like beads of Baltic amber with the big innocent pupils swimming in the middle. But he wasn’t innocent- for Boatswain had taken sides on this microcosm of Creation. The only animal in the Garden had come to Thomas’s aide when he needed it most. Without Boatswain’s muscle standing in the way, Dunlap would have made him a catamite, plain and simple, and for that alone the dog had earned Thomas’s undying loyalty. What he had done to deserve Boatswain’s loyalty in the first place was forever unknowable, but Thomas had a feeling the dog understood the meaning of it better than he could ever hope to. And that realization of the depths of the dog’s love loosened his tears more than the purely logical prospect of eating him.
“B-But he’s my dog.” Thomas pleaded, turning back to Dunlap with wet eyes. “Ain’t never even had dog before.”
“Ay but it’s good, lad. It won’t taste like however yer’ thinkin’. Like a good chop a’ mutton.” Richard said, advancing towards Boatswain, his fingers curled menacingly around the oar. “I’ll take ‘im behind that there dune if’n you aren’t up to watchin’.”
“No!” Thomas roared suddenly, with a ferocity he didn’t think he had the strength for. “I ain’t gonna eat my dog! You ain’t gonna eat my dog! I won’t let you!”
Dunlap gripped the oar tightly in both hands. Eyes haggard but retaining a primal intensity. Thomas scrabbled to his feet and rolled right as the oar came down where he had been laying a moment earlier. Boatswain was up in an instant, still running circles around Dunlap despite his starved condition. Three skeletons trying to kill each other. Boatswain leaped at Dunlap, fangs glinting moonlight, and received the paddle-end of the oar squarely upside his skull. His world exploded in a firework of white that faded rapidly to the inky black of unconsciousness, and the dog dropped, a crumpled black-and-white sackcloth in the snowdusted marram.
Thomas pushed himself back up, hands numb in the snow, and saw Boatswain jumping at Dunlap, Dunlap swatting him down with the oar. His hands and feet were frozen but his heart was kindled with rage and his blood was hot in his ears. He scooped up two instant fists of snow, packed brick-hard by the fury of desperation, and threw each of them at Dunlap as he rushed the cook in the same move. The first missed narrowly, but the second snowball hit him square in the back like a cannonball; Dunlap winced under the impact and then Thomas slammed into him and they tumbled down the dune, the ice-crusted snow breaking like plate glass under the bodies of the struggling men.
Thomas was first to his feet. He threw a desperate jab at the poisoned cook, missing but following through immediately with an uppercut that hooked Dunlap below the chin, knocking his head up like a sack. Thomas turned and ran for the oar, but Dunlap recovered quicker than he’d anticipated, and right as Thomas gripped the sharpened end of the oar, Dunlap’s skeletal hands were yanking it from the paddle. Poisoned by rancid shark flesh but his strength remained level with Thomas’s, and his grip prevailed- he yanked the oar from Thomas, shoving the boy down on his buttocks in the snowy sand. He stood over his vanquished opponent like a proud son of Cain, the oar’s pointed end held up like a spear.
“Now, come ‘ere boy. I ain’t gonna hurt you if I ain’t have ‘ta., but goddammit if I can’t have the dog I’ll eat you jes’ the feckin’ same!”
Thomas stared wide-eyed at Dunlap. Feral. That was the only word to describe the cook. Completely feral. Gaunt, hollow eyes haunted by hunger; scraggly, seaweed hair and a thin beard matted by salt. The once proud muscles reduced to miniaturized parodies of themselves. Long Lankin, who lived in the moss…
Thomas stared up at Dunlap’s sharpened oar and knew it was over.
Silhouetted by all the stars of the Firmament, Boatswain bounded down the dune. Eyes fierce and red as Antares. Black muzzle curled back in a ferocious snarl, exposing the long, whetted fangs. His white coat a wet blanket draped over lean but muscular bulk. Thomas hide his eyes in the crook of his arm as the dog leaped for Dunlap, unwilling to watch as the cook swung the sharpened oar to bear…
Dunlap was right. He hadn’t expected it to taste this way. It looked like beef, after skinning. But it tasted like rich, salty pork. A little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to deter the tastebuds and they both ate their fill.
“It’s good, ain’t it Boatswain?” Thomas said. His face smeared red with blood, hands still grasping the half-eaten rib.
Boatswain gnawed on one of the thick femurs, gobbets of meat still clinging to the ligaments. He cracked it in his teeth and held up one half with his paws so he could lick the marrow. Eyeing Thomas contentedly, as if to say What took you so long?
The driftwood fire sizzled nicely and he had more flesh roasting over it on a skewer made of a spar that had finally washed up from Nancy. Some marine subsidence or change in the current was finally giving her wreckage up to the shore, boxes and rigging and even a nicely-sized piece of sailcloth. He’d dragged the sailcloth ashore right away and spread it out on the dune to dry, the new blanket pinned by rocks to prevent it blowing away. But the rest he decided to leave until he and Boatswain had eaten their fill.
“What’d he call it again, old boy?” Thomas asked, punctuating the question with a belch. “Thanksgiving? Well, we’ve got enough here to be thankful for- we got a blanket, we got a fire and warm food in our stomachs, and we got each other.”
He scratched the dog’s ears and Boatswain’s amber eyes closed in bliss. What more could a dog want besides marrow from a bone and a good scratch behind the ear from his man? Down the beach, the terns were a ballistic furball of white feathers, lapping up guts.
In the interest of improving my writing, I dug an old book out of my closet titled “642 Things To Write About”, which was given to me as a birthday present by my uncle some years ago. It’s exactly what it sounds like- six-hundred and forty-two writing prompts. It’s a neat book; apparently it was written in a single day with contributions from several dozen writers. I intend to write something for every single one of these prompts, not as a daily exercise, but not irregular either.
This is the second entry in this series, written after prompt #2 - “The worst Thanksgiving dish you ever had.”